


The Fifth Day

by artemisgrace



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Confusion, Five Stages of Grief, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Regret, Requited Love, Resentment, background Gladnis - Freeform, they kiss, undefined relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 09:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17916329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemisgrace/pseuds/artemisgrace
Summary: It's the fifth day since Noctis went into the crystal, and Prompto's not dealing with it so well.Edit: Now with part two, in which a resolution is found, and love confessed. It's bittersweet, but it's enough for them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Named after an Airborne Toxic Event song that gave me mad feels. Somebody on Twitter was talking about what it would be like if Noct got his old phone back when he returns and it's full of unread messages and unheard voicemails, and well, call this a prequel to that.

The fifth day dawns pitch dark on the other side of the windowpane, much as the last four had, the sky but a thick black blanket covering the world, heavy, smothering, leaving the only indicator of the hour the clock on Prompto’s phone. The device is still operational, but it’s across the room now, lying on the floor, in the corner where it had been thrown, lonesome and cold, the screen dark as it waits for someone to come along and light it up with a touch . . . Prompto hates it, deep and visceral, because it’s too familiar, too close, all while the world around him has become a stranger, and everyone in it stranger still. Not just unfamiliar, but wrong.

All waiting to be lit up again.

When he woke up today, Prompto had rolled over to tell Noct about his dreams, but the bed beside him is empty and the sheets chilled. The room’s empty, and so’s the sky, so he’d rolled face first into the pillow and stayed there until the need to breathe became truly desperate, turning his head to keep himself alive. He wants to tell Noctis something, anything, wants to have one of those bullshit conversations they always have when what they want to say is too hard to get out, talking circles around it until the void in the middle forms the shape of what they really mean. He looks at his phone, across the room, forlorn on a bare floor, and he wants so desperately to call. To give Noct a call, the way he does when things get bad, the way Noct calls him when things get bad and they can calm each other down. He could, he could try, but there would be no answer, not unless he picked it up himself.

Noctis forgot his phone. He’d stumbled from sleep, forgetting it where it lay, so Prompto had picked it up for him, put it into his own pocket to return it later, at some convenient moment, or when Noct next needed it. It wouldn’t have been the first time; Noct had forgotten his phone at Prompto’s place enough times that it almost felt like it was intentional, an excuse to come back, to stay a while longer. Grabbing his phone for him had become a habit, something he hadn’t really thought about five days ago, but now it’s all he can think about. 

Noct’s phone is one of his own vest pockets, hung haphazardly on a hook on the back of the door. If Prompto called now, it might ring; he’s not sure though. From the outside, he could feel the shape and the weight of the phone in his pocket, but he hasn’t undone the snaps yet, hasn’t opened the zipper, hasn’t taken it out to see it with his own two bleary eyes, because then it would be real. Really real.

Prompto hadn’t understood how much those little mundane things meant, things like picking up Noctis’s forgotten phone for him . . . He knows now what people mean when they say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone, ‘cause he wants nothing more right now than to press that phone into Noct’s warm palm. 

The phone might be off. It might be out of battery by now. Or worse, it might be on, waiting silently for a call, for a text, for something it light it up again, but there’s no one to answer, just Prompto, and he can’t even bring himself to look at the phone, let alone answer it were it to ring. No point anyway, in calling a phone that only he himself could answer, or in answering a call for somebody who can’t pick it up.

No point in getting up to retrieve his own phone from the floor; it’s not worth the effort of hauling himself upright. It’s best if they're both out of reach, so it’s not just Noct who’s unreachable.

Prompto stopped crying two days ago, though whether it’s due to exhaustion or dehydration, he’s not sure. Gladio had brought him some water, prompted by Ignis, but the two of them had their own grief to contend with, their own loss and confusion, their own obligations to each other, and it’s too much for them to occupy themselves with looking after Prompto. He’d probably resent them if they insisted on trying, to be entirely honest, and all three of them know it. 

Noctis would know too, if he were here, better than anyone . . . he always knows Prompto best. 

He heard Ignis use the past tense in talking about Noct yesterday, and it had sent the floor spinning out from under him, the world gone sideways as well as dark, but he hadn’t said anything, just stumbled away him Ignis and Gladio to somewhere he could sit alone. No eyes on him, even kind ones, for even kind eyes can weigh heavy in times like these . . . Prompto just isn’t ready to let go of the present tense yet, not while Noct’s clothes in his bag still smell like him, not while his phone sits in Prompto’s pocket, with his fingerprints still on it. 

Maybe Ignis had known more, known earlier, and been able to start grieving already, or maybe he’s just as efficient in grief as he is in virtually everything else, but either way, it’s not something that Prompto is capable of. He’s not even sure he wishes it were something he could do.

Maybe he will still call or message one of these days, grasping for some kind of comfort, for some lingering connection . . . but not today. He’s not ready.

He’s got one of them from the bag, one of Noct’s shirts, keeping it underneath the pillow. It might be weird if anybody else knew about it, if Gladio or Ignis saw, or if at some point Noct finds out. Prompto’s not sure exactly where the boundaries are between the two of them. They never really talked about what was happening between them, but it wasn’t nothing, curling up together at night, hand in hand. Kisses in the dark; they were fleeting but they happened, and it came naturally enough that neither of them had felt the need to make a big thing of it, it was just something that came next, that had been waiting to happen for a long time . . . but now Prompto finds himself wishes he’d said something. Wishing he’d asked.

He’s not sure exactly what it was he would have asked, what the question would’ve been, but he wishes he’d asked it, because maybe that would’ve given him one more thing to hold on to now, on the fifth day . . . Day five of sleeping alone, waking to no good morning kiss, no hand to hold. Well, the other guys would probably hold his hand or hug him if he asked, but it wouldn’t be the same, wouldn’t mean the same thing. It might still be good for him, the support and all that, but it’s probably going to be a while before he feels alright asking for it . . . right now, it would just make him more upset, thinking about the hand he can’t hold, the arms that aren’t there to hug him. 

Maybe Noctis would want him to have that shirt under his pillow. Maybe he’d want Prompto to hold on to his bag and his phone, to keep his clothes folded the way he’d packed them. To be honest though, Prompto is about a week and maybe a few beers away from wearing one or two of those shirts himself, carrying Noct with him like that. But he won’t wear all of them. If he wore them, they wouldn’t smell like Noct anymore, just another fragment fading.

Rationing the remainders . . .

A thought crosses his mind then, and it stings like lemon juice in a paper cut. That phone, lying in his vest pocket . . . he and Noct never finished their last round of King’s Knight. It’ll still be on that phone, waiting to be played, to be finished, but there’s nobody to play it now, nobody but Prompto, and he’s not going to touch it. It’s Noct’s game to finish and the thought of finishing it for him, or even simply forgetting about it, feels too much like disowning the person he’s loved most in his life, like admitting to the loss, turning Noctis into a memory rather than somebody Prompto slept next to less than a week ago. 

For fuck’s sake, it was less than a week ago, how can Iggy even think of talking about him like he’s the past? Prompto isn’t really angry, not at Ignis, but he just doesn’t get it and his own inability to deal alone frustrates him so fucking much . . .

He’s just not ready for Noct to be a memory, even if they don’t know how long he’ll be gone . . . the thought has occurred to him, the notion that Noctis might not even come back during his lifetime, after all, a lot of people’s life spans are awful short these days, and who knows how long Prompto himself was built to last . . . but even considering that possibility feels like falling down a deep, dark well, so he shakes his head and grabs on hard to the bed frame, as though it’ll keep him from falling away, knuckles whitening to keep from drifting, and it’s not just the metal beneath his fingertips that he’s holding onto . . . it’s his best friend. Love of his life maybe, but again, they never really said, never talked about it. 

Noct might not even be gone that long, they don’t know, Prompto thinks, chest swelling with something that is either hope or desperation . . . any day now, they don’t know, and it’s only been five.

Oh fuck, it’s only the fifth day . . .


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis comes back, and Prompto gives him the phone. What messages have been waiting the last decade for him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally got some inspiration again, so I bring you part two, in which feelings are resolved. It's a bit bittersweet.

It’s been about an hour, and Prompto is still lost in a sort of fog, his thoughts coming to him slowly, as though swimming through treacle, and even as they reach him, they seem to simply slide off without properly sticking; each and every thought has been slippery since Noctis came back today.

He’s imagined this so many times over the past, on countless occasions he’s pictures Noctis’s return, but in none of them did Noctis ever pull up in the passenger seat of a vehicle, after a telephone call and a good while of waiting in anticipation of the imminent screeching of brakes that would mark the end of a decade. No, in Prompto’s fantasies, Noctis returns to them much as he left, in a flash of light, suddenly there where he’d previously been absent, filling the void he’d long since left in their lives. Slipping back into place oh so easily, the last missing piece of the puzzle finally returned.

He hadn’t anticipated the deep discomfort that set in when they’d found themselves at long last face to face. He hadn’t expected that they’d be tongue-tied, each something of a stranger to the other, each having visibly evolved in their time apart, having become, in a way, different people. Prompto had known, of course, that his best friend was the prophesized king, that he had something of the divine in him, but knowing isn’t the same as feeling, and Prompto can feel it now, coming off of Noctis like gentle ripples of electricity, like an aura of sorts. Noctis’s importance, in Prompto’s eyes, had always been first and foremost that Noctis was his best friend, of singular importance for this fact alone, but now Prompto understands on a level he hadn’t before that his friend holds in him more than Prompto’s own hopes, but the hope of their whole world. 

It’s hard, knowing this as he now does, to look Noctis in the eye like he used to. He’d imagined them running to each other, arms out to clasp each other close in an embrace, the long, lonely years melting away in one wonderful instant . . . but it wasn’t like that. Noctis had stumbled from the vehicle, looking about as tired as any of them these days, and Prompto got the sense that, whatever long sleep he’d had, it hadn’t been a restful one. Neither of them had reached out their arms. There was no fond embrace upon first catching sight of each other. What there was was lots of awkward eye contact and hovering around each other as Ignis and Gladio took the practicalities in hand. 

Neither of them knew what to say, and it’s hardly any surprise. What are you meant to say in circumstances such as these, ten years apart and meeting again at what feels like the end of the world? Does anyone know? How can they, when this has never happened before?

It’s honestly kind of awful, looking into a face you once knew so well to find it different, knowing that you’d not been there to see the changes happen, to pass the years together . . . At once it’s been ten years and no time at all, and the weight of the years hangs heavy on Prompto’s shoulders as he crouches in the dirt just out of sight of the others, afraid to look at Noctis but equally afraid to let the man out of his sight, trying to gather himself in a moment alone. 

He’s at a loss in a way that he hasn’t been in years, and it pricks him with guilt, because he should be happier, but he just doesn’t remember how anymore . . .

He hears footsteps and starts, his first instinct to reach for a weapon, even though he knows logically that the land beneath his feet is warded and safe, but after a moment he realizes that he recognizes that particular gait, much as he last did a decade ago. 

“Hey, Noct,” he presses the words out through reluctant lips, the phrase having gone unused since the last time that Prompto had a fever, a year or so ago.

He stands quickly, giving his face, and his eyes in particular, a good scrubbing before turning to face Noctis, doing his best to meet the man’s eyes even as the other appears to be struggling similarly. 

“Hey, Prom,” Noctis responds, and the voice is deeper, older, more tired.

He looks and sounds a lot more like his father than he did when they last spoke like this. Prompto probably sounds different too, probably looks as different to Noctis as Noctis looks to him, but it’s hard for Prompto himself to say since he’s spent the last couple thousand days watching his face change bit by bit, too close to it to really remark the individual differences. 

Noctis’s face though, Prompto had memorized it at age twenty and kept it in his mind all the way through to thirty, with the photos saved on his old camera acting as reminder whenever Prompto felt he needed one. This new Noctis had lines on his forehead and beside his eyes that he hadn’t before; he had stubble and tired eyes. If Prompto had thought that Noctis looked tired at twenty, well, he hadn’t had any idea, had he? Prompto wonders if Noctis remarks a similar weariness in the new lines that the years had carved into Prompto’s own face, but it’s not a question that he really wants to ask right now.

He’s not sure what he wants to ask right now; there’s just too many years and too many questions built up between them like the stones that form a dam, keeping them from running together like they would have once done.

“Are you okay?” Noctis asks him, and Prompto is almost taken aback by the question, after all, shouldn’t it be Prompto asking that of him?

He’s tempted for a moment by sheer habit to tell Noctis that he’s fine, to brush off the concern like he’s done so many times before, but this isn’t the time for that. Noctis’s return has restarted Prompto’s hibernating heart, but it comes with the knowledge that this won’t last long at all, that their expiration date is creeping closer, creeping faster. There’s only one thing left to do before they all go into battle together again one last time, and that’s to tell the truth, lest all these truths fade into gaps between the lines in history texts, lost to time. Memories going unshared only to fade into forgetfulness and disappear.

“No,” he replies, biting down his own foolish fears, “I’ve waited so long to see you again, and now that you’re here, I don’t know what to say . . .”

“I’m not sure what to say either,” Noctis tells him, and Prompto wishes he were brave enough in this moment to reach out and wipe the sadness from Noctis’s face, “It feels like I saw you only yesterday.”

“Feels like that to me too. Kind of. That or like it’s been a century.”

“I’m sorry," Noctis looks down, shoulders slumping even lower than they'd already been.

“It’s not your fault,” Prompto finds his courage reaching out a tentative arm to rest on Noctis’s shoulder, “You didn’t choose this.”

“Neither did you,” Noctis raises his eyes to make the firmest eye contact that he and Prompto have had since Noctis arrived, “So I’m still sorry.”

“Wish we had longer,” Prompto speaks, scarcely above a whisper, as if speaking his selfish wishes too loud could incur more divine wrath than they already have in store.

“Me too,” Noctis murmurs back before a louder voice pierces the air, shattering the quiet that’s built up around them.

“Blondie!” Cindy shouts from somewhere near by, “Help me out for a sec?”

“Be right there!” Prompto shouts back before turning back to Noctis with a softer voice, “Sorry, but I’d best see what it is she needs. I’ll be back in a few.”

He turns hesitantly, not eager to leave and yet desperate to get away, an odd clashing of currents that leaves him feeling kind of sick with the churning of metaphorical waters. He doesn’t get far though before a weight in his pocket reminds him of something he ought to do . . . something that Noctis ought to know about, even if the thought scares Prompto practically to death.

“Um,” he says, turning back around to face Noctis again, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the item that had long been sitting within, “I plugged it in to charge when we got the call. It should be working, though I doubt you could call anybody with it nowadays.”

Prompto hands Noctis the phone, the one that Noct had unintentionally left with him when he’d gone all that time ago, heart pounding as Noctis regards the thing with something between shock and affection. 

“You forgot it, you know, that morning? So I picked it up for you, but I never got the chance to give it back,” Prompto explains, heart creeping up his throat as he speaks.

“You kept it all this time?” Noctis asks, something like wonder tinging his voice, the words coming out breathily.

“Well, yeah,” Prompto shrugs uncomfortably, “I knew you’d be back for it. Just didn’t know when.”

“Blondie!” the call rings out again, summoning him.

“Coming!” he replies loudly before hesitating one last time, saying to Noctis, “You, uh, you’ve got messages.”

“O-okay,” Noctis answers, unsure, as Prompto turns and finally takes his leave.

Preferably only a brief leave, Noctis thinks as he watches Prompto go, feeling the weight of the phone in his hand, the metal warm from having been kept in Prompto’s pocket. Noctis wonders how long it’s been there, and an odd hesitance stays his hand from opening the device for a moment before he shoulders the feeling aside, switching the phone on and pressing his thumb to the sensor to unlock it. 

It’s just as he left it. The background is still the distorted image of Kenny Crow that Prompto had set it to as a joke, yet even that ridiculous thing seems somehow solemn now. The last photo in his phone’s album is an unflattering picture of Ignis mid-yawn, but Ignis had never seen it in order to be angry with him for it, and now of course never would. If Noctis weren’t too tired to be angry, he’d have shouted his fury at the gods for having tainted such simple things as these, for having stolen, well, everything from himself. From the others. Knowing what has to be done and why doesn’t really soothe the chafing at what’s been lost, not even now that Noctis is resigned to his fate. 

He realizes that he’s dawdling, neglecting to to read his messages or listen to his voicemails, even as he sees the large, surprisingly large, number of them waiting in his inbox. He’s at once curious and intensely terrified to find out what words await him there, but he hasn’t the time to dawdle, can’t afford to hesitate like that, or else he’ll simply never know. 

He swallows the fear down and opens his voicemail, holding the phone up to his ear, and he’s not surprised to hear that Prompto’s is the first and oldest voice recorded here. 

“Hey, Noct,” a Prompto of ten years ago says, voice tremulous as he speaks, “I, uh . . . Yesterday I said I wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t leave messages for somebody who can’t get them, but, uh, talking to one of your shirts stuck on a pillow wasn’t doing the trick, so . . . Ugh, I’m such a dumbass. It’s day six, you know. Not even a week, and here I am talking to your phone like you might magically hear it. I’ll . . . I’ll talk you you later, bud. Hope you’re doing okay.”

The message ends, but there’s another waiting, so Noctis blinks away what tears threaten to gather and presses the button to hear the next one.

“It’s, uh, it’s me again,” Prompto tells him through the phone, “It’s almost a month now since, well, you know. It got sketchy there for a hot minute, but I’m doing okay now that I’ve had some more time to think. I told Iggy about the phone and he seems to think that it’s a good idea for me to keep talking to you like this. I think he might even try it sometime; I told him he could. 

“Anyway,” Prompto continues after a brief pause, “there’s some stuff we never cleared up and it’s been getting to me. I always say ‘love you, dude,’ with that ‘dude’ on the end ‘cause it feels like the safer thing to say, but I mean it, both with and without the ‘dude’ at the end. So, yeah, that’s the thing I wanted to say. I, uh, I love you . . . shit, it’s so tempting to say ‘dude,’ but I wanna be past that now. So, yeah, I love you. Talk to you later, buddy.”

It’s nothing that Noctis didn’t know, but hearing it aloud is different, and hearing it spoken from nine or so years past is something different altogether. He quickly presses the button again, and this time another voice greets him.

“Hello, Noctis,” Ignis greets him, voice made oddly distant by the speaker, either that or he’s holding it a bit away from his face, “Prompto told me I could do this, but I must confess that words largely escape me still. It would seem that no amount of forewarning could prepare me for this long night with you gone, even if the darkness makes no real difference to me now. But I digress, I’d really called to say that, well, I’ve been looking after you since we were both children, and I don’t entirely know how to pass my time without you here. 

“I never really had a life outside of you, and while I do sometimes wonder what else there might have been, I don’t regret it. If given the choice, I would do it again. I just . . . needed to say it aloud. Goodbye, Noct.”

The tone of a button pressed again, and Prompto speaks to him again. 

“Six months,” a distraught voice grinds out, “Six months and I still see you out the corner of my eye sometimes when I’m tired. I turn to tell you stuff, and it turns out you’re just a shadow on the wall, or a chair that somebody hung a coat on. I need to turn around and see you really there, okay? I need to sleep next to you, not just next to a pillow with your shirt on it -yeah, that’s a permanent feature and I’m a big whiny baby, deal with it- so you’ve gotta come back, okay? Okay?”

The last "okay" wobbles on its way out of Prompto’s mouth and Noctis can visualize the trembling of his jaw as he speaks, or well, as he spoke, nine and a half years ago. It’s echoed by a trembling of his own as he mechanically presses the button again. 

“Iggy said I should do this,” Gladio tells him, gruffness covering a deeper, sadder tone, much as it often did with him, “I’m not as good with words as he is though, so I’m not really sure what I should say . . . We all miss you, Noct. I miss you. And I’m sorry for some of the stuff I said before; I hope you know that I didn’t really mean it. So, yeah, that. Bye.”

Noctis knows, and he wishes he could reach back in time to say so, but that’s the theme, isn’t it? Wishes. Wishing that things had gone differently, that they could be different now. Every last person in the sun-starved land is full to bursting with wishes, and few will find theirs answered. That’s just the unfortunate way of things. 

He gulps against the tightening of his chest and taps to hear the next one.

“One year,” comes Prompto’s sigh, less upset, but more tired than he’d been in the last message, “To be honest, there were a couple of messages between six months ago and now, but I deleted them. You don’t need to hear those. I wanted to tell you though that I’m getting better with things, with dealing with stuff. I don’t see you in the shadows anymore, not unless I’ve pulled an all-nighter, and I don’t do that so often now either. 

“I still miss you, man, like a piece of me’s missing, but I’m not dying without you. I’m figuring out that I can love you to bits and still live without you, forever even, if I have to. I don’t know when you’ll be back, but I can survive the wait, and I want you to know that. I’ll never stop loving you or missing you, but I’ll be okay until you get back, so you do what you gotta do, and don’t worry about me. Love you, Noct. See you later.”

The tears come unbidden, and just as no amount of wishing can turn back time, no amount of trying can keep a decade of sorrow back when it presses forward hotly to tumble from Noctis’s eyes in crystalline drops. He blinks hard, and when he opens his eyes again, he sees Prompto, the real Prompto of the here and now, come back around the corner to rejoin him. He can’t stop the sob that bursts from his chest, something between sorrow and joy expelled from him on that puff of air, leaving him somewhat lighter.

“Noct?” Prompto voices his concern but a brief moment before Noctis steps forward, seizing Prompto in his arms, holding the man tight to his chest even as it heaves with emotion, “Noct?”

Noctis shakes his head, burying his face into the side of Prompto’s neck as his hand comes up to cradle the back of Prompto’s head, fingers weaving through blonde hair as if trying to capture every last aspect of this man, of this moment. Which is precisely what he is doing, Noctis considers; he’s memorizing everything he can. Prompto was able to withstand the wait to see Noctis again today . . . so Noctis will be able to withstand the wait after tomorrow, however long it may be, until he can see Prompto again.

After all, what is time to them anyway? The passage of it may chafe, but it won’t destroy them, not them. They’ll still come back to this, every time, Noctis thinks, as he presses a kiss to Prompto’s lips for the first time in a decade, as sweetly as if the last were but yesterday.

“I love you too,” he whispers to Prompto, standing there in the dark.

Time may try, but it will never stop those words from being true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How'd y'all like it? I've got a couple ideas for some more FFXV, and specifically Promptis content, if you're interested in that sorta thing.

**Author's Note:**

> That phone stays in Prompto's pocket for ten years . . .


End file.
